Lebanese-Armenian Protesters outside the movie theater. As the Daily Star reported, they were shouting slogans such as “Truth will triumph” and “We remember”. Image from AztagDaily

Around 60 members of Lebanon’s Armenian Tashnag Party trapped the Turkish ambassador to Lebanon inside a movie theater on Wednesday, protesting the Turkish Government’s official stance on the 1915 Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire. Ambassador Suleiman Inan Oz Yildiz was attending the premiere of “Son Mektup,” a Turkish movie set during the Battle of Gallipoli (1915-1916). The incident was also reported on the Official Centennial’s Commemoration’s Website.

The time chosen to promote a movie set during the same year as the Armenian Genocide isn’t being interpreted as a coincidence. Indeed, in a statement released online on Lebanese Armenian Daily “Aztag”, the Turkish government was accused of trying to distract the world’s attention from the Armenian Genocide Centennial, which will be commemorated worldwide on April 24th of this year.

THE (Turkish) HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION AND THE CENTER FOR TRUTH JUSTICE MEMORY TO BECOME INTERVENING PARTY IN THE PERİNÇEK CASE

On January 28, 2015, the lawsuit Doğu Perinçek v. Switzerland will begin retrial in the Grand Chamber, which acts in the capacity of court of appeals for the European Court of Human Rights.
It is now common knowledge that in 2005, Doğu Perinçek traveled to Switzerland, which has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide and passed a law criminalizing its denial, in order to issue declarations in Bern and Lausanne where he impugned the Armenian Genocide as a fabrication. In 2007, Perinçek was found guilty of deliberately violating national law and convicted by the court of Lausanne. Upon Perinçek’s appeal, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in his favor in 2008 and found that the court of Lausanne had violated the freedom of expression principle enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights, article 10.
The Human Rights Association sent a letter to the Swiss Federal Office of Justice in 2014, demonstrating in detail how the denial of the Armenian Genocide incites hostility toward Armenians and imploring Switzerland to appeal the ECHR decision. Switzerland’s subsequent appeal and request for retrial were accepted in June 2014.

Why we remember, 99 years after the Armenian Genocide

“For your freedom we have lived and for your independence we are dying.” —Abdul-Karim el-Khalil, with a rope around his neck, May 6, 1916.
Every year, Armenians all over the world — in Armenia and the diaspora — commemorate the anniversary of the genocide on April 24. On this day in 1915, around 400 Armenian intellectuals were arrested by the Turkish gendarmes and were all executed. The plan of the Central Committee of the Young Turks Party was simply to annihilate the Armenian nation and to create a Pan-Turkic Empire, which would extend from Istanbul to Central Asia. During this Genocidal campaign, around 1,500,000 Armenians perished and hundreds of thousands of Assyrians, Syriacs and Greeks were slaughtered. Henry Morgenthau, the US ambassador to Turkey who witnessed the massacre, quoted Ottoman ruler Talaat Pasha as saying, “What Sultan Abdul Hamid failed in 30 years, I have accomplished it in just 3 months.” The genocide was done.
This year, the Lebanese-Armenian committee of the 100th anniversary of the genocide organized a candle-lit march on the eve of the genocide’s Remembrance Day. It started from the Bourj Hammoud Municipality Square and headed towards Martyrs’ Square in Downtown Beirut. Thousands of people, young and old, lit the streets with their candles and shouted “Justice!” as they marched. By 9 pm, Martyrs’ Square was filled with both Lebanese-Armenians and non-Armenians, with Lebanese and Armenian flags, and guest speakers gave their speeches.
In his speech, former Interior Minister Ziad Baroud insisted that no matter what, the truth must be recognized, because denial can’t erase or heal the wounded memories of the Armenians. He added, “Today I see the tears of pride in the eyes of the young generation, the tears that you inherited from your grandparents.” The next guest speaker was Haigazian University President Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian, who stated that although 99 years ago, Armenians were deported from their land, leaving behind their homes, properties, memories, history and were marched to the desert towards an ambiguous future, our ancestors didn’t lose hope. They founded and built new homes around the world. He ended his speech with the following: “Before 99 years, Armenians were scattered like ashes right and left in dark, but today, today my fellow people and youth, you have overcome on the dark, with the candles in your hands, you have lightened the Martyrs’ square, this square which was also covered with dark when the same criminals executed the (Lebanese) intellectuals.”

“In actuality, how Turks and Armenians, as the owners of this common history, can together, through dialogue and empathy, reach a just memory of the tragic events of 1915, which occurred during the great human sufferings of World War I, is already being examined thoroughly and in all its dimensions. In this context, our proposal to establish a Joint Historical Commission, also reflected in the Turkish-Armenian Protocols, remains on the agenda.”

The quotation is from the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s press release regarding the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s recent resolution on the Armenian genocide. In the wake of its centenary, this is the uttermost point reached by the Turkish state in the perception of the annihilation of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian citizens: A “just memory” and a “joint historical commission”. The just memory is a euphemism to recall revenge killings of Muslims in some areas by Armenian avengers once their people were decimated by the state and their neighbours. And the commission is a sort of face-saver to equate the pains.

The ruins of an Armenian church in the eastern village of Hozat in Tunceli province, Turkey [AFP]